SuitabookSubway love
Nora Raleigh Baskin
- Reading
- Consider checking in about family disruption, and if the book’s treatment of physical abuse is upsetting, let your child choose whether to pause or discuss it; the level of detail is unclear.
- Themes
- A connection across time: Laura and present-day Jonas can see, touch and talk to each other on particular subway trains; leaving the train breaks their connection. The book’s stance on this remains unclear.
- Family change: Both young characters struggle with parental divorce; Laura also feels distressed about her mother’s boyfriend and travelling to her father’s home. The book’s stance on this remains unclear.
- Art and racial tension: Spike wants Jonas’s photography to help preserve his subway graffiti, believing a white boy with a camera may attract less official attention than a Hispanic graffiti artist. This situation brings race and unequal exposure to authority into the story; its wider treatment is unclear.
- Worth knowing
- Physical abuse is among the novel’s stated subjects, but its nature, extent and depiction are not clear. Parental divorce and racial tension in the 1970s also feature.